Tuesday, February 10: Classic Arcade Gaming

Did you know you can relive part of your childhood in the form of these
classic games for free, thanks to the Internet? What's more, these games
are downloadsyours to keep and cherish forever.

Emulators and ROMs

Emulators are software programs that essentially duplicate the innards of old
video game machines, as well as classic consoles such as the Atari 2600. ROMs
are the games themselves, extracted from the source code of the originals and
zipped up to be read by the emulators.

If this seems a bit confusing, don't worry. Some excellent sites are
devoted to this nostalgic pursuit. At ClassicGaming.com, you can find a variety
of emulators and hundreds of ROMs to download.

Mame

By far the most popular type of emulator, according to ClassicGaming.com site
director William Cassidy, is Mame
(http://www.mame.net). Mame and
its Windows counterpart, Mame32
(http://www.classicgaming.org/mame32qa),
emulate more than 1,500 classic arcade games such as Joust, Centipede, and Pole
Position. There's also a Mac version called MacMame
(http://macmame.org). Here's
how to use Mame:

Download the game ROMs. The legalities involving ROMs are far from
resolved, so you'll have to find the ROMs on your own.

Install or unzip the Mame file. Notice that in the newly created Mame
directory, there's a subfolder called ROMs.

Put your downloaded ROM files into the ROM folder in the Mame directory.
Do not unzip the ROM files. Mame was created to accept ROM files in zip
format.

Start Mame. From the File menu, select Show Only Available. If you
don't follow this step, Mame will list every supported game, whether you
have it or not.

You can customize controls within each game's properties. These
include sound, game controller, and video settings.

Select the game you want to play and click Run. To skip the first warning
screens, type ok. The game will need to boot up in Mame.

Here are your game's controls: 5 and 6 insert quarters into the
game; 1 and 2 select one or two players; during the game, adjust specific game
settings by hitting the Tab key; Esc exits the settings menu.

Console Emulators

Most other emulators focus on one console, such as the Atari 2600 or the
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Some of these include Stella (an Atari 2600
emulator), ColEm (ColecoVision), Genecyst (Sega Genesis), and NESticle (NES,
http://www.classicgaming.com).
"Virtually all console systems before 1995 or so have been emulated,"
Cassidy says.

Emulate Multiple Consoles

The only emulator that handles multiple consoles successfully is called Mess
(http://mess.emuverse.com).
Most people would rather find the emulator that gets their favorite games just
right.

Emulators for the Mac

Emulation.net is the one-stop shop for Mac users interested in emulating
classic and not-so-classic game machines, including such greats as the Super
Nintendo, the Atari 800, and, of course, Mame.

So, this community of enthusiasts has given these games a whole new lease on
life with emulator technology. But at this point you might be asking, are these
games legal? Isn't someone, somewhere, going to want to be paid?